


I Am Sending You Mercy

by witchoil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Worship, Face-Sitting, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Gender-neutral Reader, Long-form, Not Beta Read, Original Character(s), Other, Reader-Insert, Resistance (Star Wars) - Freeform, Slow Burn, drunk makeouts, gratuitous kissing, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:15:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5769223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil/pseuds/witchoil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are a deepwater mechanic from Alluuvia who found your way to D'Qar and now works to keep the Resistance base from falling apart. You have dreams of becoming a big shot pilot like the one you work for and the right friends to help you get there. </p><p>You also have a thing for the not-technically-a-war-criminal-anymore, Ben Solo, and would really love it if said friends would stop giving you so much shit about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Sending You Mercy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roughmagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/gifts).



> This was originally supposed to be a short post-heel-face turn Ben Solo body worship gift fic but spiralled crazily and madly out of control. The words "it got away from me" are so ludicrously insufficient as to actually be somewhat insulting to whomever may read them, so I won't bother with 'em. However I do have a few more words, and seeing how friggin' long this thing is, I don't feel bad about giving it a sizable introduction. Title from [this beautiful poem](http://elisabethhewer.co.uk/post/118543144112/asterion-ariadne-part-i-by-elisabeth-hewer) that kicks me in the chest every time I read it.
> 
>  **In general:** this came from a strong desire to see Ben get things kissed better and express some love for Adam Driver's everything. If you're into that, then you've come to the right place. 
> 
> **On the character:** this is a fully-fleshed out OC! You get an identity and a backstory as well as a (thin) personality. You do _not_ get a gender, a name, or any indications of appearance. The story gets progressively higher in rating as you go, starting at a gentle G and working up to a full E rating, but be warned that it does take its sweet time. Once you get to the explicit parts you may notice that I have written this OC with a body that is typically designated female. This is because it's what I'm most familiar with and (I assume) what's most in demand from a readership perspective. However this is by no means a female OC -- their gender is whatever gender you'd like it to be! 
> 
> Head's up for alcohol use (but no abuse), and some tipsy kissing.

You are working on Jessika Pava’s X-Wing when you hear the news.

The sun is high in D’Qar’s cloudless sky and as much as you appreciate the dry warmth of it (and after the 10 or so years you spent on Alluuvia before joining the Resistance, how could you not?), you still find it a little alien. The way the heat-light glints off of the still-shining metal of the X-Wing’s components and brings a thin sheen of sweat to your brow is distracting as you try to work, much like the chatter among the other mechanics. They talk as they walk and as they work, not unlike your old colleagues. But unlike them, these conversations float in and out of earshot constantly, different from the radio chatter of Alluuvia’s deepwater mechanics which was mostly a constant stream of technical updates and curses in Ithorese.

So you try to think of it like the sound of the currents which you are used to. You hear the talking as a woosh of information traveling back and forth and back again like a tide throughout the day. Sometimes you can hear whole stories without anyone ever telling them to you, like the time Jessika challenged Snap Wexley to see who was better at evasion maneuvers and they _both_ ended up having to give up their sweet rations for the next week because Dameron happened to hear about the challenge, too. Sometimes, tyou hear it all in one go. But never before had you actually abandoned your work in the middle to address this rising tide. Not until you hear a nervous shout and the sound of nearly two hundred people on the airstrip all murmuring at once.

Disbelieving questions ripple out from central command to your section of the flight deck. “Is it--?”s and “I don’t believe”s and “defected”s running together in your ears before they collapse into tense silence as the shadow of the _Falcon_ mounts the horizon.

You abandon your project in the middle to huddle with the others when it lands, flitting between confused and agitated while Shouula fills you in.

“Pava said it happened two days ago, according to Dameron,” the Mirialan whispers. The tattoos on her forehead bob up and down excitedly, as if this were ordinary gossip.

“But why?”

“We don’t know.”

You feel a shiver run down your spine at the very thought of _him_ here on the base. It’s impossibly dangerous to house him here, but where else? You match her low tone asking, “What will they do with him?”

Shouula sighs and presses closer as the crowd grows denser around you, her bare green shoulder nudging your covered one. “We don’t know.”

When the exit hatch hisses, the murmuring stops, and when Kylo Ren is led off of the _Falcon_ , the resultant silence somehow deepens. There is awe and fear and rage running through the Resistance members gathered together, and it is expressed in a breathless, choked hush.

He is unmasked and shackled, head bent as Chewbacca leads him out. His heavy black robes are a shredded mess in some places, crusted over in others with what you realize must be dried blood. Rey the scavenger follows behind him, the black helm tucked under her arm like a gruesome trophy, and the clank of it hitting the lightsaber that hangs at her belt seems like the loudest sound you’ve ever heard in the silence.

There is a soft scuffling as General Organa emerges from the crowd to address her prisoner. She calls him Kylo Ren when she accuses him, and his head finally snaps up to hear it. The look on his face almost makes you stumble into Shouula.

His face is shocking because it is so different from what you expected. Something old, maybe, something twisted and ugly, certainly, but he looks almost boyish if not for the sharp angles. His cheeks are not quite hollowed out, and his wide lips convey an uncertainty you cannot help but feel embarrassed witnessing.

You expected a Sith lord to appear stony and hostile, but what you see instead is a confusing mix of fear and rage and something else that the fear and rage have tried to mask. There is a raw quality to his face and reading it like this you understand that the mask is a necessary part of the costume.

“You will stand trial for the crimes of Kylo Ren,” the general says, and he remains silent before her, eyes drifting down and away again. “Do you agree to cooperate in these proceedings?”

“Yes,” he says. You can’t quite hear it yourself, but you can see his lips move and his head nod the barest bit.

“Good,” she responds. There is a tiny fissure, perhaps, in her words, but no one would ever admit to hearing the general’s voice crack. “Welcome to the Resistance, Ben.”

You are more than ten meters from Kylo Ren when General Organa says this, but you swear you can _feel_ the way his body tightens, as if taking an unexpected blow. That raw, open face turns stricken and he says with a voice like wet gravel, “Thank you.”

The general clicks her heels together and turns to leave and his face scans the crowd. Perhaps he is looking for someone he knows or someone he senses, you think, and for half a second you wonder what it would be like to be that. All you know is the myth of him and already that image is becoming cloudy and confused. Questions rise to your mind, all clambering for attention, but fall silent in the span of a second, as his eyes move over where you stand with Shouula. His gaze skips and pauses, falling on you. If his expression was a lot to take in before, it is almost unbearable now when it is fixed upon you, like being thrown in a deepwater rush you weren’t expecting, everything going staticy and blurred before you can even register the movement.

And as quickly as it happens it is over. Chewbacca leads him away behind the general and the crowd parts to let them through.

\--

The whole trial lasts for about three months and you think it’s impossibly short for something so monumental, but also understand the general’s eagerness to get past the process so that they can begin using him for information.

Day by day, the formality of it relaxes until, on the day of the sentencing, Kylo Ren stands before a plain-clothes council looking like any civilian (minus the huge diagonal scar crossing his face).

General Organa gives the verdict to a full command room, and the parallel to the day of Ren’s arrival does not escape you.

“Under the deliberation of this council, Kylo Ren is sentenced to execution for his crimes and actions of war against the Resistance. There is no doubt to the veracity of the accusations and the council sees no point to the rehabilitation of one who has so thoroughly committed themselves to the cause of dismantling this movement. His effects will be destroyed and spaced rather than kept as trophies, for we have no use of such things. Does the council accept this sentence?”

There is a chorus of “ayes” and raised hands as the council affirms the sentence. Kylo Ren’s head hangs again to stare at his hands, still symbolically bound throughout the trial and you wonder what he’s thinking and if he knows what will come next.

“However,” General Organa continues, “we also welcome back to the Resistance a member we long ago thought lost. Kylo Ren does not have a place here among us, but you might, Ben Organa-Solo. This is your chance to prove it.”

He pulls his hands up to his face in a show of gratitude, but in the moments he takes to raise them before his hair falls forward to shield his eyes from view, you swear you see a tear escape his eye.

In a familiar crumbling voice he says, “Thank you,” and is led out of the room. 

\--

The transition from seeing him – Ben, now, not Kylo Ren – only in shackles to walking unaccompanied around the base is easier than most expected. In drab grey civvies he is only as intimidating as his height and while that’s not insignificant, he’s hardly the only Resistance member over six feet.

It takes him time to make anything even resembling a friend, but at some point he starts dragging himself to the mess and eating like a normal human being. For a time, Rey is the only one brave enough to sit anywhere near him, but she is well-liked (well, _loved_ ) among the Resistance and people slowly join her at Ben’s table. It isn’t normal even now, but it looks like a good approximation of it, you think when you join that table with Shouula one day.

She and Rey are in the middle of a conversation about a part the _Falcon_ needs to upgrade its communications system and she beckons you over, bending her head to tell Rey that you’re a good person to talk to about external ship parts since you know a lot about making machinery work in inhospitable environments. She introduces you two breezily and Rey clasps your wrist firmly with her thin, calloused hand.

When you sit, you correct her sheepishly, a little starstruck to be talking to her: the Scavenger and Last Padawan, the only one capable of returning the prodigal master and now, his prodigal student. There’s a lot of that going around, you think.

“Actually I specialize in high-pressure environments rather than just difficult ones, but I’m learning.”

Her eyes are bright when she turns to you, her clipped accent ringing in your ears and coming off surprisingly genuine. “Really? What kind of environments?”

“Deepwater,” you say back. “I worked on the mining rigs in the trenches on Alluuvian.”

“Wow,” she says with a look of wonder, “all that water… What was it like?”

“Wet?” you offer with a goofy smile, and Rey responds with a high, hearty laugh.

As Rey’s laugh tapers off you notice a lower sound beneath it and realize that you’ve been sitting only ten feet from Ben Organa-Solo the whole time and that he’s _laughing._ It’s more of a chuckle if you’re being picky about it, but the sound is pleasant in that it’s…very human. It’s kind of silly actually, like the dimples that form when his mouth stretches into a real smile.

Rey notices his participation and bridges the gap, “This is Ben,” she says with a small gesture, “but you already know that.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” he follows, and his voice is smoother than you’ve heard it before but still retains a rough texture, like he doesn’t talk at full volume very much. It’s deep, too, which you must have known somehow after hearing some of his testimonies over the trial, but it didn’t register like it does now when he’s just an arm or two’s length away.

“Nice to meet you, too,” you say. “I’m a mechanic here on-base. I mostly do ship maintenance and heavy machinery.”

Shouula pipes up, always ready to brag about you, her first and only recruit and best friend on-base. “You want to be a pilot, though, and your training is going really well.”

There’s a joke among your other casual friends that she’s sort of like your mother. Only a few solar cycles older than you, she’s much more mature and one of the Resistance’s better diplomatic assets, so the image isn’t all that unbelievable. For all intents and purposes, you two appear like a meticulous parent and her rebellious child, with her constant guidance and your constantly changing mind.

“Thanks, Shouula,” you say with an affectionate eye roll, “or should I say, ‘Mother’?”

Her eyes screw up in that way you’ve become accustomed to translate into laughter and she smacks you lightly on the shoulder. “You just never seem to mention it, is all, and I think it’s wonderful. In a sense it’s what the Resistance is all about. You get to become what you want to be, not just what you need to be to survive. Rey understands what I mean.”

Rey raises her eyebrows in what you all assume to be agreement as she stuffs another forkful of food into her mouth and there is another chorus of friendly laughs from all of you, even Ben.

When you take off to go back to working on Pava’s ship before her mission, you repeat your “nice to meet you”s to your new acquaintances and thank Rey for the advice she gave you about the repairs to the ship even though _you_ were the one who was supposed to be helping _her._ She brushes it off brightly and wishes you luck and just as you turn Ben echoes the sentiment, freezing you in place.

“And good luck on getting your wings,” he says with a light tone that you’d call “mischievous” on anyone else. “If you can’t impress them with your maneuvers, I’m sure you’ll charm them with the jokes.”

 “Well, if its works on the ex-Sith lord, then the examiners should be a piece of cake.”

“Cocky.”

You puff your chest out, affecting the very cockiness he accuses you of. “What can I say, I’m good at what I do.”

You never talk about your _actual_ work this way, but banter is another matter entirely. Your quick wit was one of the things that made adjusting to life on the base easier for you, and what brought you and Shouula close. Even if others don’t see you as the best mechanic, most that know you would say that you’re by far the funniest in the rare occasion that you do speak.

He raises an eyebrow and the corner of a lip. “Evidently.”

By this time, Shouula is looking at you like she’s just learned a dirty secret; black lips pursed, eyes narrowed, and one painted brow raised high.

“It’s getting late,” she says, “don’t you think? We should be getting back to Pava’s ship.”

And with a single fluid motion she’s also gotten up, somehow said her goodbyes, taken both of your trays in hand, and turned you towards the door. It’s not until you get outside and are bustling across the warm tarmac of the airstrip (space, you think, does summer here ever _end_?) that she lets loose.

“Flirting with the _war criminal_?”

“That’s – I mean, I’m not—”

“Please,” she cuts you off with one of _her_ famous eye rolls this time, shining brown irises tracing 270 degrees of black-lined eyelid like she actually practices it in the mirror. “I know it when I see it. I’m not that much older than you, but I _am_ older than you.”

She shuffles you along and you are caught between feeling fearful and defiant of her judgment. It’s not until you reach the ship that you say anything more.

“But I am an adult—”

“I know,” she interjects quietly.

“—and he’s not _technically_ a war criminal. Anymore.”

She laughs at that, and you feel relieved to see the way her face relaxes. She massages her temples in mock-frustration. “Oh, Space, what am I going to do with you?”

“Trust me like I trust you?” You incline your head and she rubs a thumb in soft circles on your forehead in a familiar gesture of comfort between the two of you.

“Ah, yes, that. I suppose I can do that.”

“Thank you, _pama_.”

“You’re welcome, _espara_.”

\--

For all of Shouula’s worry, you don’t speak to Ben again personally for at least three weeks.

It’s a busy time, as the Resistance grapples with the new intel Ben has given them in order to mount a full-scale attack on the First Order. Everyone is tense and you sit through a lot of meetings that you’re not sure you have clearance to attend, but Shouula is insistent. (“I know you want to be a pilot, but if it doesn’t work out I’ll need an aide at the next Senate meeting, and I’d rather take you than that green little diplomat, Weller. I doubt he’s ever held a blaster in his life.”)

In a strange way, though, the new urgency helps him. He seems much more at ease in front of a holo-projector than at the small tables of the mess, which makes sense at least from a physical standpoint. Anyone would prefer to stand than to fold their knees nearly up to their neck. But it’s also in the way he speaks, voice growing less and less rough with each passing day. He exudes purpose, now, rather than discomfort and shame. It is not comfort, exactly, or confidence, but when he offers information he seems to lighten.

It is like he is coming unbent, you think to yourself one late night working on a cargo transporter. When he opens his mouth and gives up another secret, it is like watching someone open their closed fist.

And it is in the middle of this thought that he finds you.

More like stumbles upon you, but semantics.

“Sorry to bother, but medical needs that new shipment as quick as you can get it there.”

The voice seems to come out of nowhere and pulls you bodily out of your reverie, causing you to smack the back of your head against the lip of the transporter’s panel that you’re working in.

“Force, I’m _working_ on it.” You mumble as you crawl backwards out of the panel to see who’s interrupted your work only to straighten up and be met with a broad chest less than a foot from your face.

“Oh,” you say. _Shit_ , you almost say, but it doesn’t quite make it out in the process of scanning your face upwards to find him looking down.

“Hello again,” he says back.

“Yeah, that.” You grab the rag at your hip and attempt to rub some of the grease off of your hands, your arm, and oh god you remember getting some on your face, too, _just fuck it,_ you think, _just leave it_. You drop the rag as quickly as you grabbed it and do your best to give a look that’s not as startled as you feel.

“So the shipment?”

“The transporter’s busted, so if they want it across this airstrip before moonrise, you’ll need to carry it.”

He works his bottom lip back and forth like he’s deliberating very carefully and runs a hand through his messy dark hair before reaching directly over you to grab a couple of the boxes off of the transporter. His arms nearly encircle them despite their size and you swear you don’t take any more than a quarter of a second to admire how the thin leather of his jacket is pulled tight at the shoulders or strains slightly across his biceps. Certainly no more than three tenths of a second, at the very outside.

“Will you help?” he asks.

“Mechanic,” you say, showing your greasy palms, “not a box-carrier. I’m sorry, but this is outside my area of expertise. Looks like you’ve gotta do it.”

“Then I’ll need you to key open the door at the med bay when I get there,” he says. “Hands busy and everything.” He cocks his head casually as though he’s toting a caf in one hand and a holopad in the other rather than 60 pounds of medical equipment.

“Now that _is_ within my area of expertise.”

You walk mostly in silence, thinking that this is a pretty menial task for him, just ferrying shipments back and forth. But besides providing information at meetings there’s not a whole lot he _can_ do. It would be stupid to let him go on missions off-base while this situation is still so fresh and while the First Order is undoubtedly still looking for him.

Listening to him huff every once in a while it also occurs to you: he doesn’t actually need to be using this much effort. He could probably carry these boxes with the Force as easily as you carry the tool belt around your waist; as Rey had explained it over breakfast last week, it’s not really about the size of the object as much as its complexity. You asked for an explanation and Shouula – well-educated in this area – obliged. A small person, she said, would be significantly more difficult to move than a rock five times their weight because the energy of the Force is dense in them.

Of course, this realization becomes useless when you think about it more. As convenient as his ability with the Force may be, Ben won’t be allowed to exercise it again for a very long time, if ever. It was for the same reason that he had to remain on the base. There was, conceivably, exactly one more place on the galaxy where they could hide him safely, but it was out of the question that he should even entertain the idea of training with Master Skywalker. Sending him to Luke’s would only make General Organa nervous and distract the Master from his Padawan’s training.

You didn’t realize how lost you’d become in your thoughts until Ben comes to a sudden stop beside you and clears his throat. You didn’t think you could have possibly walked the whole 300 meter trek from the hangar to the medbay, but there you are. You notice there’s a bead or two of sweat at Ben’s brow, plastering a few gently curling hairs to his temples, and you let yourself admire the effect. He just looks at you expectantly.

“Could you get that?” He sounds only a little strained and you figure he can probably wait a few more seconds, regardless of the impatience written plainly on his face. So you make a show of finding your key card, slowly checking in every pocket besides the one on your chest where you have always kept it, and when you finally do retrieve it he lets out a huff as he adjusts his grip on the supplies.

“Find it?”

“Had to be in there somewhere,” you say, drawing back as the lock beeps and the door to the med bay opens with a soft wooshing sound.

“Had to be,” he throws over his shoulder through teeth gritted in concentration as he walks inside.

When he emerges, you are still at the door curiously eyeing a dolly resting nearby.

He huffs again when he notices what you’re looking at and you suppress a nasty grin. “You must be kidding,” he says, his tone slipping back into that ground-down version of itself that now mostly indicates agitation or disbelief.

You grit your teeth as you look back up at him, doing your best to pretend you _aren’t_ completely satisfied with yourself. “Oops,” you say, now obviously insincere.

He groans melodramatically, rolling his shoulder until it clicks, and you think about the image of the closed fist loosening a little further, fingers falling open like a broken cage.

You turn your head away to hide the small smile that is quickly spreading across your face and grab the dolly, starting back off in the direction of the hangar where the transporter still awaits your attention.

“For next time!” You shout straight ahead, knowing he can still hear you.

“How about next time you actually fix the transporter?”

You shrug and look back over your shoulder, “We’ll see, I guess. Maybe next time someone else will be doing the fixing.”

\--

Eventually, the waiting comes to an end and operations begin. Someone who’s never fought in a war before (maybe someone like you) might assume that this time would be even more difficult than the planning stages, with the constant threat of casualty hanging over the base, but someone who’s been fighting in a war for a few years knows better.

The business that you noticed during the planning stages – restocking everything, making sure every redundancy on every vehicular asset is in working order, gathering in all deployed assets to be briefed before they’re sent out on long-term maneuvers – only intensifies in the last few days. The overcrowded base starts shedding operatives like you shed layers on the particularly hot days of D’Qar’s summer, and all of the supplies that were carefully squirreled away are dragged out and assembled for the personnel that will need them. With the airstrip in constant use and the hangar full of supply kits in various stages of assembly, the base is a disastrous mess. There’s no room to be scared for your friends when you’re busy making sure your screwup isn’t the one that kills them.

As she packs her bags for a clandestine reconvening of what remains of the New Republic, Shouula explains this.

“ _That_ fear won’t come until the calm,” she says, “When the battle starts and your trapped on-base, only getting as much as they can report back as it happens.”

A look of concern crosses your face and she must see it from the corner of her eye, because she’s dropping the black garment in her hand to turn to you and take your hand.

“It’s okay to be afraid for them.”

You nod in response, expression mostly blank as you try not to get lost in the thought of it. This will be the first time you’ve been here for a major operation since Shouula picked you up while she was off-world during the destruction of Starkiller base. Questions have been swirling around in the back of your head ceaselessly for the last three days, each one worse and louder than the last, but you’re not sure you want to ask any of them. Shouula understands that.

She presses her thumb to your forehead and her words are light, but dampened by the fears you’re both struggling with. “Now you understand why I leave early for my talks like I do.”

“Yeah.”

You know what she’s going to say next, about training you to be her aide so that you can accompany her on these half-missions, half-escapes, but she holds her tongue. You’ve been improving on your preliminary flight scores and are only about six months away from becoming a support pilot, and after all of the prodding and minor disagreements she’s finally realized that no amount of goading is going to stop you.

“I promise to stay whenever you fly, _espara_. You know that. But for now I have to go.”

“I know,” you say, “Thank you.”

She kisses her thumb where it still rests on your forehead and sends you off to finish your repairs (these days there are never _not_ repairs), returning to finishing her packing alone.

\--

The attack itself is a small one, and most of your bets are very well-hedged, but the energy on the base is still electric on the day of. This is the first maneuver the Resistance will be making in a quick, coordinated series of attacks meant to confuse and weaken the First Order’s hold on the inner rim. Before this operation, the Resistance doesn’t stand a chance at destroying or even crippling the Order, but after it they might pose a real threat.

“The fact is, we can’t cut them off from Kuat at this stage, maybe ever,” one of the other mechanics, Kektrin, says as you work with him and two others on a suspended freighter that will be going out with supplies to the base once it’s been captured. He grunts as he adjusts his grip on a part above his head, “So we have to start with the places where the raw materials are coming from. If we can show the worlds with the mines and the refineries that we’re better allies than the Order is business… _shit._ ”

The part drops to the ground and Kektrin asks for a hand holding it up while he gets it secured back into place, but Coen is the only one who’s tall enough to reach up into the freighter from this angle and he’s just disappeared for his lunch break, leaving only you and your equally short companion, Nona.

“Just a sec,” you mumble as you scan around the hangar, noticing a familiar face (well, a familiar back) only about 10 meters away.

“Ben!” You yell across the hangar, and he turns from talking to Major Ematt. “Come give us a hand!”

He makes what you guess is a quick apology and jogs over to the freighter.

“What is it?”

“Help Kektrin,” you say, “hold that part right there while he gets it back in place.”

“I thought this was your area of expertise?”

“Being a mechanic, yes. Being tall, not so much. Now get to work, operative, it’s very important that this gets done in the next thirty minutes.”

“Why is that?” Ben asks as he looks up into the complex bowels of the freighter.

This time Nona answers, “Because that’s when the mess is closing and this one can’t stand to have to wait an extra two hours to eat.”

“I refuse to be the one idiot sitting in the mess eating cold dinner while the mission is live in the command room.”

And this is how you all end up all eating lunch together, the three mechanics and their tentative, ambiguously-ranked friend. It is also how you end up going back to finish closing up the freighter together, too, Ben eventually dropping back just to watch.

“You don’t have to sit, there, you know,” you say, “I’m sure there’s other stuff someone would be happy to have you do.”

“You’d be surprised,” he responds. “Besides, I’m going to need to learn to do something at some point.”

“You think?” You ask. It’s not a particularly pointed question, but rather an honest one. He’s been so firmly in limbo that you never really thought about what he _could_ do for the Resistance. Not command, obviously, and not diplomacy, at least not for a few years until a diplomat such as him would become more useful to show off than he is dangerous to transport.

“Can’t haul boxes of medical supplies around forever. A droid could do that. In fact,” he says, eyeing a nearby automatic transporter, and his voice takes on a conspiratorial tone, “I think they may already have replaced me.”

You follow his gaze, agreeing with a small hum. “I do hate to see a pair of hands go to waste.”

He smiles at that in a way that makes your gut twist, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and you realize the secondary edge your words could take on.

“I’ll try to keep them useful, then.”

When Coen finally returns, he doesn’t look at all interested in work. In fact, he looks rather winded, having just run the length of the hangar to come find you and his odd accent (he calls it a “brogue” but you don’t know what that could mean besides “quaintly misshapen vowels”) lacks its usual energy.

“Time to go, Team Echo, the transmissions from the attack are about to start coming in. Thought you might want to be present.”

You had expected the command room to be as hushed and tense as when Ben landed on base, but instead it’s a tangle of movement and shouted orders. Nona notes your pulled back chin for the surprise it indicates and pokes at your side with a smile.

“There’s a reason it’s called a command room and not a spectator room,” she says and you’re forced to give a nod in agreement. That’s true, but you hadn’t expected it to be such a…mess.

Lieutenant Connix is watching the maps, turning every few seconds to report indecipherable numbers to Admiral Ackbar, and he keys them into a holo-pad that’s hooked up to the general’s main display, taking notes on each readout the mysterious numbers seem to produce. Meanwhile, Admirals Statura and Guich are in open debate in front of the large display when they’re not giving clipped orders to the under-executives that hurry back and forth from terminal to terminal in their headsets as the fleet begins to check in.

From what Coen is saying and what you can catch being tossed over projections by SO’s, the fleet is just outside of detection range of a First Order base in the Osarian system. You try to ask him where that is, but Coen seems distracted by the chatter and his inexhaustible interest in command structure. Pretty much all of the mechanics have bigger dreams, and his is to be here in this room permanently, so you cut him some slack.

And just as soon as you accept that your questions are probably going to go forever unanswered, Ben leans down and says something that you don’t quite catch over the noise. You tell him so, so he leans closer, practically talking into your ear, and explains that Osarian sits along the Correllian Run.

The gesture is kind, but also arresting in that it sends a chill down your back to have someone so close. A second shiver follows it a moment later when he goes on.

“It’s a quiet base on a disabled star destroyer, locked in the orbit of one of the system’s planetoids. It’s mostly used as a stopover by negotiators.” He lets out what you think is a small, private laugh. “I don’t think what we had quite qualified as diplomats.”

There was the bit that you were always forgetting. When he smiled in that gentle, embarrassed way at one of Shouula’s bad puns or bit the inside of his lip as he tried to tie his hair back, it was almost impossible to imagine that he was the same man who had arrived in black robes and dried blood. You begin to wonder if that distance says more about him or you, but the thought dies immediately as the general takes her place at the head of the main projector.

She nods at Admiral Ackbar, and the attack is officially a go.

\--

It lasts for what you know can’t be more than hour, but it feels like a lifetime with the way you’re all hanging on to every report and searching the projections for any sign of trouble. More and more maintenance and sanitation personnel filter in as it goes on and you imagine that, for the first time in a month, the hangar is completely silent. The thought is surprisingly comforting.

It goes without saying that you remained rooted to the spot you were in when General Organa began giving orders throughout the attack, occasionally commiserating quietly with Nona to your right when something technical came up and shooting quick questions to Ben on your left when it’s something strategic. He replies to all of them, but there’s none of the intimacy to it that was in his quick explanation before the attack began. His face is hard in a way you haven’t seen before, like he’s constantly breaking his own concentration, or trying to read something he knows he can understand but which confuses him nonetheless. You realize this is because he’s looking at the battle from two angles simultaneously. He’s given command all of the information he can, but he still has a better understanding of how the First Order will respond to each of their maneuvers than anyone else on the floor. The Resistance now knows what to anticipate and what sorts of things to watch out for as they fight, but they do not know what will come next before it does. From the minutely shifting expressions on Ben’s face it’s clear that he, in fact, might.

But in the end, his information seems to have been enough. By the time the Order falls back on its biggest guns, the fleet has already been working furiously at disabling them for nearly 40 minutes in between drawing out the totality of the base’s fleet and taking them on wild chases around the star destroyer. It takes around 60% of the Resistance’s total X-Wing fleet, but they subdue the base completely without having to destroy it. You’re not sure what exactly they’ll do with it, but by the time it becomes clear that they’ll have to make that choice you’re too overcome with relief and excitement that you can’t find it in you to worry.

And thus begins your initiation into another first of Resistance life on-base: the legendary celebrations. You’ve heard all manner of stories of wild things pilots have done, battle-high and happy, so what happens in the command room seems necessarily subdued. But there is still much hugging between the non-combat personnel present and more than you would have expected between the commanding officers.

Nona grabs your shoulders and jumps up and down excitedly, shouting about the victory, and Coen nearly picks her up off her feet in a bear hug when she lets you go. Nona kicks her legs excitedly and you draw back to avoid her heavy work boots, stumbling directly into Ben in the process.

A wave of anxiety washes over you as you imagine the both of you falling back into a control panel or even worse, more people, but it dissipates and transforms into an altogether different kind of anxiety when his hands catch you by the arms just as you fall into him. It’s something like the most awkward hug you can possibly imagine and you begin to mumble out an apology when he’s leaning down again and squeezing where his hands hold onto your upper arms.

“Good work.” You swear you can hear the grin in his voice, and all worries you may have harbored about his earlier stiffness disappear. “They couldn’t have done it without you, you know.”

A second later he’s releasing you and you’re turning around, mulling over your possible response, aiming for something between “thank you” and another jibe about carrying boxes when Nona and Coen descend and tear you towards the door.

She’s saying something about how she wants to talk to Jessika about the ship as soon as she gets back, and he’s mumbling something about getting to the alcohol at the back of the hangar before anyone else, but you just turn bright red. You throw your head over your shoulder before they drag you completely off, and yell back to Ben.

“Told you I was an expert!”

The sound of his laugh follows you out of the command room and nearly all the way to the hangar.

\--

Once the pilots _do_ arrive, the stories that came to mind earlier finally start to make sense. Where there was some grateful, relieved hugging in the command room, the pilots go straight for kisses with anyone and everyone in reach, especially their mechanics.

This means that when you do finally get to Jessika’s ship, you have less than a second before she’s all over her grateful mechanic team. First is Nona, who gets one straight on the lips, then Coen who gets his hair ruffled and his ear pulled (“For that awful music chit you set to autoplay when I jumped to lightspeed, you big idiot. Bagpipes?! Ugh!”). And then she’s kissing your cheeks and your nose and saying “thank you” over and over.

“She drove like a dream,” she says when she finally pulls back and the expression on her flushed face is earnest and grateful. “Thank you so much for adjusting the wingtip thrusters like that. You might have saved me from annihilation by TIE fighter.”

“Of course, Jess,” you say, relieved to see her and horrified to think that in another universe you may not have gotten to.

“Oh don’t look like that,” she says, thumbing your nose, “that’s just how battles are. You’ll get used to it. Now let’s get to the hangar.”

In these times, just after a large operation, the hangar is mostly empty and becomes what some on the base refer to as “the pit”. Pilots are discarding gear wildly, stripping down to their undershirts and leggings, and the seasoned non-combatants are setting up for what looks more and more each second like a party.

Within minutes, there’s a drink in your hand and a sizeable, shifting crowd of excited personnel in various states of combat dress (mostly minimal at this point). Then there’s shouting, and someone is lifting Poe Dameron up on their shoulders so he can speak to the crowd gathered in the middle of the hangar.

“Now I know you all know this,” he says with his prize-winning smile and a glance around at as much of the crowd as he can turn to, “but this is just the first step.”

The crowd boos affectionately, and he waves them down with a playful scowl and some literal hand-waving.

“This battle is the first step in a fight that’s finally starting to turn on our side!”

At that, they all cheer, you included, and the heady feeling of mob celebration starts to buzz around you.

“After long years of doing nothing but defending, the Resistance is finally on its own two feet, and we’re not gonna get knocked down again!”

The cheers are even louder and longer this time, and Poe’s smile has transformed from prize-winning to something you’ve heard others describe as pants-dropping. When he scans over your section of the crowd, you fully understand why.

“Alright, alright,” he says, waving his palms at the ground so that the crowd will quiet down enough to let him finish. “Don’t forget that you’re all a part of this victory today, and every victory afterwards, no matter where you are and who’s with you.”

Some hats come off at that, a kind nod towards the two pilots lost in the fight, and a reminder to all of them of why they’re fighting. “But for tonight, this is the only one that matters! And before I go get drunk and make the rounds—” chuckles, at that, for those who know what kinds of ‘rounds’ Poe has made in the past “—I want to give my gratitude to a new-old member of the Resistance who made this possible.”

“Ben!” He shouts across the hangar, all the way to the doors where Ben is lingering among the thinnest portion of the crowd. “Welcome back! We missed you, buddy!”

You expect there to be at least some audible disapproval from the crowd, but the truth is that Poe Dameron is magic when it comes to people and the high of winning a battle does a lot for an individual’s agreeableness, and instead there’s one last deafening cheer. Whoever is holding Poe up starts to bounce him up and down on his shoulders, and the crowd descends upon him as he’s let down, transforming again into a roiling mass of celebration and mechanic’s moonshine, which you recall is affectionately referred to as Rocket Fuel. 

You let yourself be tossed by the crowd for as long as you can stand and drink down as much of your Rocket Fuel as you can stomach before squeezing your way out of the center of the crowd and finding some air to breathe.

But even outside of the nexus of the action, there’s still plenty of people to see and bump into. Seeming to have the same idea as you, Jessika appears somewhere to your right, and she totes you around for a while, telling all of the pilots that you’re the one responsible for her improbable turn radius, and you get a _lot_ of hugs for that. Wexley seems especially impressed when she tells him and says something about flight testing that makes your tipsy heart leap excitedly in your chest.

Slowly your steel cup of Rocket Fuel empties (blessedly, you think, as that’s the worst shit you’ve ever put in your body and for 7 years you lived on nothing but protein paste and hard tack, which makes Jessika laugh uproariously), and you two make it further and further around the hangar. You’re faintly aware of something that could be loosely described as “music” echoing around the place, but you’re too far from the speakers to really hear it. When you point it out to Jessika, her face lights up like a control board at takeoff and she says, _yes_ , _that is_ such _a good idea, let’s go find it!_ You slur back that, _actually, no that’s not what I meant, Jessika_ , but she seems uninterested and takes the sleeve of your jumpsuit in shockingly strong fingers.

The whole way there, she drags you through the crowd and you bump into more people thank you can count on both hands, constantly apologizing as you attempt to stay upright, but it’s not until you can hear the music sans echo that you finally run into someone that you know.

“Ben!” You yell, and it almost comes out a screech, but he doesn’t seem perturbed. It’s clear he’s not as bad off as you are – who the _hell_ filled your cup, anyways, did they not see that you’re only a few fingers over five feet? how well is the average pilot expected to hold their liquor? – but he seems pleasantly bleary-eyed and he’s got one of those tiny smiles going that would make your head spin sober. You grab his arm for support as you pass by and realize that you never got to repay his earlier thank you.

But the words are waaaaaaay out of your reach at the moment and though you have hope that they’ll come if you give them enough time, you’re not sure where he’ll be when you figure them out. So you just shout “Come!” and let your hand slide down to his wrist, which you grip tightly.

His smile spreads, changing the shape of his face to something almost heart-shaped and once again you marvel at its emotive ability, except in your head it happens a lot more like the sound of five question marks in a row and the emotional-conceptual equivalent of a very large, very comfortable sweater. This in turn makes you realize that he’s actually wearing a sweater at the moment and _that_ makes you laugh for reasons only Rocket Fuel can explain. In any case it’s infectious, and soon you and Jessika and Ben are all squished and dancing in the middle of the crowd.

Jessika shouts something happily and you shout back, saying nothing in particular, and the call-and-respond continues like this until you’re both shout-singing together along with the music, sweaty fingers loosely entwined.

And then, inexplicably as it started, Jessika stops, spotting someone she hasn’t visited with yet a few feet away.

“I have to go!” she shouts. “I’ll be back, stay here!”

You start to say that you’ll just go with her, but she’s shaking her head.

“Ben, you take care of this one,” she says before she disappears, pulling one of his hands up to replace the one of hers that you’ve been holding. “Don't want my little mechanic getting crushed by the adoring crowd.”

“You’re littler than me!” You shout hoarsely after her. “Tiiinyyyy Piiilooooot!”

You’re aware that Ben is laughing at you, and you turn to him with a petulant sneer-turned-pout, “What? You think I’m funny?”

“Yes,” he shouts back over the sound of the music, still laughing. “I do think you’re funny.”

You razz him more for that, not a hundred percent sure of what you’re saying but absolutely certain that you’re killing it in the funny department, if his laughter is anything to go by. He only manages to shut you up by goading you into proving that you’re as good of a dancer as you are a joker, and drunk you has never been able to turn down a challenge, a quality that made you a quick hit with the other deepwater workers back on Alluuvian.

Sometimes likeability is another part of survival, you think in Shouula’s voice, and smile secretly to yourself at the memory of her. You wish she could be here right now to see how well you’ve settled in and to see how silly Ben looks with his long, graceless limbs and goofy smile. A moment later, you catch yourself thinking that this is probably the best night of your whole life so far, and you don’t even have to get into dive gear again once it’s over!

That makes you laugh harder, caught in a loop between the hilarity of your own nonsense and the nonsense of your life, and before you know it you’re falling up against Ben’s chest and letting your laughter out into the soft navy knit of his totally improper choice of clothes. It doesn’t smell nice, exactly, but you like it anyways. There are a lot worse places to end up with your face buried, you think, and you take a moment to breathe like that.

“You okay?” he says to the top of your head. “Do you want to go outside?”

You nod and “mmm” in response, having only half forgotten about Jessika, but knowing she’ll be fine on her own.

When he pulls away to start moving through the crowd, you realize that your hand has been in his this whole time and you’re grateful that your cheeks are already red from the fueltank gin. Though the thought also occurs that you’re not nearly as tipsy as you were on the way into the dancing crowd and that maybe you _should_ be worried how much the flush will show.

The two of you eventually stumble out of the worst of it, and you suggest that you go outside to get some air. Ben agrees with something between a hum and a mumble.

At the doors of the cavernous hangar, you take a moment to appreciate what you think might be the first cool breeze you’ve ever felt on D’Qar. You must mutter something about it, because then Ben is asking you what you said, and then you turn to look up at him.

This time you’ve got the words all worked out before seeing him sends them scattering. “I said I guess summer is finally ending.”

In the silence that follows, you don’t look away, but study one another’s expression and you remember suddenly what it was you were so eager to tell him earlier with a soft “oh”.

“Ben,” you say, and he “hm”s in response. “Good work. To you, too, I mean. With everything.”

And the way his face softens plus the way that neither of you turn away makes it obvious what’s going to happen next, but it still takes you by surprise when the hand that’s not holding yours comes up to cup your cheek and his lips meet yours. He’s so gentle it nearly knocks the wind out of you, waiting for you to press up into the kiss before fully committing to it and somehow this only makes you want to kiss him harder.

Your hands disengage and twist, fingers lining up so that they can thread together comfortably despite the size difference. After a moment, he shifts slightly, making you worry that it’s going to end with that and the thought fills you with a nameless version of fear you’ve never met before. But then your lips are parting and his are, too, and it goes on. The whole thing makes you dizzy, so you bring your free hand up to bury your fingers in that stupid, soft comfy sweater and you think you feel him sigh into the corner of your mouth as you pull on it.

The whole time, his lips slide across yours effortlessly, never getting aggressive, always following your lead, and you find yourself more than happy to do just that for a minute or two. By the time you pull away, you’re so flushed you feel sunburned and the two of you are pressed together from hip to shoulder, with his hand pressing into the small of your back. Well more like from hip-to-thigh to shoulder-to-chest with the foot of height difference, but you don’t mind. Far from being strange, the sensation is comforting. For the moment, you don’t mind being so warm.

“That was…” you start, having no idea where to go.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a guilty smile, “I probably shouldn’t have—”

“No, nope, ‘I’m sorry’ is not what I was going for I don’t think. Thank you for the contribution, though.” You fiddle with the knitting of the sweater and he gives a half-snort at your admonition, apparently used to this kind of criticism by now.

“Maybe, if you wanted to try again, it might help you find the words?”

You consider this option theatrically as you shuffle him backwards towards the outer wall of the hangar.

“I guess we won’t know unless we try.”

The metal of the hangar is cold against your hands where you bracket them around his waist and the twin sensations of cold hands and warm body causes a confused shiver to run through you. You can’t be certain, but you think you feel him shiver, too, as you lean up to kiss him again.

Scratch the earlier uncertainty: this is _definitely_ the best night of your whole life, and it would still be even if you had to put dive gear back on at the end of it.

\--

A few dozen kisses later, you and Ben are walking back to the residential barracks tired and chilly from the nighttime air, arms slung around waists and over shoulders. You’re not sure what the protocol is when you finally make it there, though. You’ve never really done _this_ with anyone before, and certainly nothing even like this on the Resistance base. How is this night supposed to end? More importantly, how do you want it to?

Ben seems equally as stumped, both of you standing before the door to the barracks just staring like idiots.

You manage to croak out a small “uh” and say into his chest, “Now what?”

He’s not sure, but not in the affected, cocksure way that says “you tell me”. It’s more of an “I’ve finished disassembling the speeder, but it occurs to me that I’ve never actually _assembled_ one before” kind of not sure. Unfortunately, for all you know about assembling speeders, the information is useless now.

“Tomorrow will be—” you start, but he quickly finishes for you.

“Busy.” You don’t think it’ll actually be all that busy tomorrow with all of the pilots Rocked Fueled firmly out of commission, but you suppose that’s your answer.

“Yeah,” you say.

In the light of the barracks, he looks much more tired than you’d thought, and you can’t imagine how that must mean _you_ look. Probably somewhere between a Toydarian and a literal pile of rusting scrap metal. The composite image isn’t pretty and just serves to remind you that, honestly, you could use the sleep.

You come to the door of your bunk first, and the rudimentary mechanics that you initially found difficult have just morphed into rocket science of a kind you’ve never encountered before. You open the door and turn your back to the wall to the side of it. Everything seems jumbled right now, and you’re not sure how much of it is the Rocket Fuel and how much of it is the stress and how much of it is just completely wrecked on its own, but you know that you don’t want to let go of Ben’s hand with the way he’s looking at you. Like he’s lost, but content, you think, a shade of nervous crawling down his cheeks, colored heady and dark red where it reaches his slightly swollen lips.

Yep, totally wrecked.

“Goodnight,” you mumble to the air just below your own chin, but he hears anyways.

He rubs a circle into your wrist and you’re reminded again of Shouula and her words. If only she knew she’d strike you just as she congratulated you.

“Goodnight.”

The next words come out like a miracle – unbidden but _thank god_. “I want to see you again.”

He seems to start at that, as if he hadn’t expected it. “I—” a soft pause, “I do, too.”

“Okay,” you say, drawing your intertwined hands up to your lips. You disentangle them and press one last kiss to the center of his palm. You think distantly that, yeah, you must definitely still be drunk to be doing this sort of thing. “For next time.”

There’s a longer pause this time as you let his hand fall back down to his side. Again, you say, “Goodnight.”

He repeats the word back, tone shakier than it was before.

You sleep like a drunk stone, but the dreams are confusing. There’s the comforting warmth of heavy black fabric swirling around you and you swim in it for what feels like hours. Then visions of pale skin, thick hair under your fingers. A sense of whispers, the feeling of a smile pressed into your skin, an unmistakable pressure that you don’t want to end. Black slowly becomes blue, like something turning itself over out of shadow and into the light of D’Qar’s three-moon sky. The pressure abates to a soft hum. You resurface.

In the morning you wake with a sore body and a quiet mind. The turbulence of the dreams coalesces itself into a strange certainty, a vague feeling of comfort. You spend the day in meditative work on Jessika’s ship, taking time to fix the dents and scrapes after you’ve finished making major repairs. Nona and Coen come by to help around lunch (looking thoroughly bruised in more ways than one), but you waved them away noting that most of the major work was already done. Kektrin doesn’t check in until regular time comes to an end, as is his supervisorly duty. Jessika even finds you sitting astride the fuselage near dusk, surprised that you’re still working.

“Got that late of a start, huh?” She says, and you can tell that although you certainly didn’t, _she_ probably did. _Good_ , you think, _deserves the rest_.

“No,” you say, “just enjoying the view.”

“Ah,” she says back, messy-bunned and bleary-eyed but knowing, “I recognize that look.”

You draw a knee up under your chin and cast a friendly look down to where she stands. “Everybody keeps saying that, but I don’t know if I believe them.”

“If you’re talking about Shouula then you should know she _definitely_ knows what she’s talking about.”

You raise a quizzical eyebrow, knowing there _must_ be a story behind this one. And one Shouula hasn’t told you? That means it _has_ to be good.

But Jessika recognizes that look too, apparently, and puts up a defensive hand. “Nope, not mine to tell. You’ll have to ask her about it. Regardless, I’m glad it seems to have gone well. At least I think I am?”

You know that feeling, you tell her. The certain uncertainty of it.

“Yeah, you think it’s particular, but the truth is that’s always how it is. We just never remember it quite right the next time it happens, you know?”

You don’t, not in the way she means, but you think you understand.

“Well, kid,” she says finally once you’ve spent a minute or two watching the sun sink closer to the horizon together, “take care of yourself. Me and Snap can take care of the rest if you ever need it.”

“Are you suggesting—?”

“That I will do my damnedest to beat up a former Sith Lord if he breaks your heart? Absolutely. You don’t get far being this small if you aren’t plucky. But you already know that, don’t you? No, mostly I can’t have my chief mechanic broken up because I need someone to keep my ship from falling apart. And I hear you've got flight training to complete.”  

If you weren’t on top of the ship, you would have hugged her for all that you’re usually a hands-off person. “Thank you, Jessika.”

“Please, you can call me Jess.”

“Thanks, Jess.”

“You’re welcome, _para_.”

Now _that_ – being the Mirialan word for something like “sibling”, sister and brother simultaneously – really got you wondering about Shouula’s story.

\--

You realize that, although he wasn’t right about the first day back being very busy, Ben was certainly right about it in a general sense. The tense pre-mission feeling returns as the excitement from the successful attack fades. There’s more to worry about now that they’re not shooting into the dark. Strategies have to be constantly generated and revised as new information comes in and it all happens in a blur.

Ben is practically nonexistent on base for a plenty of reasons that you find you can probably guess, mostly that he’s sitting in locked rooms giving council, then being ferried to other locked rooms to give additional council. It’s not as bad as you thought it would be, though, sitting in limbo. For the most part, you don’t even have the energy to miss him in between repairing/junking salvaged material and repartitioning the barracks for new recruits, and there are a _lot_ of new recruits coming.

As it turns out, part of Shouula’s mission was recruitment from various surviving New Republic constituencies. She comes home looking burned out and in need of a good massage, but satisfied and with an order in hand saying that 1,500 hands-on recruits will filter through the D’Qar base over the next three months for basic training and briefing on Resistance matters. Once their training is complete, some of them will be given handlers and sent back to their home worlds and colonies to continue recruiting.

It seems the resistance is scaling up. There will be a lot more delegation than before, and Shouula is definitely going to need a permanent aide.

You tell her that the two of you will talk about it later, when you’re not neck-deep in the preparations, and that you’ll be visiting her quarters at the end of your shift to give her that massage and catch up more.

When it’s just the two of you in her private quarters, steam from the ‘fresher still clinging to her skin and freshly-braided hair, you find again that the words don’t want to come out. As much as you had planned to be open and honest with her and as much as you trust her to trust you, the fear of her judgment gets caught at the top of your chest and stops up the whole operation.

She sighs. “I know, _espara_.”

“You do?” You let out the breath you’d been holding and the tension escapes your body in one great whoosh. To not have to say it would be a blessing to say the least.

“Of course I do. I don’t know _what_ exactly, but I do _know_.”

“Oh,” you say, tension creeping back muscle fiber by muscle fiber.

“Is it about Jessika or is it about Mr. Not-technically-a-war-criminal-anymore?”

“Jessika?”

“So not her, never mind.”

“Oh no, now you have to tell.”

Shouula sighs again and makes you wheedle it out of her, but eventually gives in and tells the whole messy tale. It takes a long time. And though she does take a few long pauses, she manages not to cry.

“Really? The both of you? With another diplomat?”

“Korr Sella wasn’t just another diplomat,” she says in a small, sad voice, “but yes.”

“So why don’t you and Jessika still…?”

“I think it hurts us too much think about her, and we both remind each other of her in different ways.” She reaches up to take your hands and holds them for a beat before guiding them gently off of her shoulders and turns around on the bed.

She taps your forehead with her thumb to distract you from the tears shining in her eyes and it occurs to you how true it is when she says she’s older. Not by solar cycles, maybe, but in other ways that count. And for the first time, it’s you who recognizes the look on someone’s face. That mixture of regret and contentment, like knowing exactly how much you’ve given weighed against how much you’ve gotten and at the same time knowing that the resultant number doesn’t matter.

“It’s Ben,” you say as she turns you around and begins working her fingers gently into your shoulders.

“Oh, _espara_ , didn’t I say I knew?”

\--

A week later, and the tension on the base finally begins to ease. At the very least, if it doesn’t ease it becomes so commonplace that you collectively stop reacting to it.

And predictably, the day you notice that much-needed slackening you see him again in the mess at supper. You’re sitting with Jessika and Coen, Nona busy showing off the barracks to the commanders that are here to visit on behalf of their soon-to-arrive troops, and Coen looks suitably miffed about it but Jessika is doing her best to cheer him up anyways. She knows what’s going on between them and often teases lightly, but knows that it’s upsetting to him not to get to see her.

Jess sees the same thing you do – that is, Ben – and nudges you with her elbow. _Go on_ , it says, and you raise your hand to get his attention.

When he finally gets to the table, he seems unusually at ease, laying a palm down flat next to his water and giving you a look you recognize very late to be veiled affection. He really can’t hide anything on that face – he’s a total open book.

“Saved the galaxy yet?” You ask with your usual teasing levity and he cocks an eyebrow as he takes a long sip of water.

“Not yet, no, but ask me again next week. What about you, have you saved the base from certain decay and destruction?”

“Only the important parts,” you say, nodding your head towards Jessika and then Coen. To be fair, you haven’t really been taking care of him, but taking care of Jess is kind of like taking care of Coen by proxy. “But I should have the rest of it fixed up around quitting time at the outside.”

“Impressive,” he says in that way that meant he really did think it was impressive and you feel embarrassed at it. What you did wasn’t extraordinary, what right did he have to be so impressed, the jerk? The big, sweet, dimple-smiled jerk.

And right around quitting time (which was now whenever the shadow of the hangar reached the third plane on the airstrip in a maddeningly organic system that suited the Resistance perfectly), he shows up at your workbay.

He announces himself with a common on-base greeting: “Aren’t you done with that yet?”

You look up over the broken transporter (why in space were they still using these things if they broke so often?) and lift your welding mask as you take him in. He’s wearing a dark green tunic tucked into flattering khaki pants and the same black leather jacket as the time you brought those medical supplies down from the hangar. His hair is loose instead of up in the small bun or ponytail that has become his standard at command meetings and the breeze (warm again, unfortunately, apparently summer never ends on D’Qar) tousels it in a way you’d find ridiculous if it didn’t look so good on him.

“I think I liked the sweater better,” you say sourly, and drop the welding mask back down. The work is actually already finished, but you pretend to weld for a second or two just for the effect. Anything for a good punchline, and you need a second to compose yourself before attempting to speak with him.

When you’ve finally discarded your things and are walking up to him, he rubs the back of his neck in mock embarrassment and clicks his tongue. “Well, I guess I’d better go, then. Find somebody who appreciates my sense of style all the time and not just when it’s convenient to rub their face on.”

You fix him with a Look that says “well played” as much as it says “you’re a shit”, and wait patiently for him to defend himself.

Instead he drops the act entirely. “Are you really done here for the day?” It’s disarming and you have to take a moment to consider that you might, in fact, be going crazy. Like, scattered-marbles, off-your-rocker, _Mandalorian_ crazy.

“Yeah,” you say with a glance back at the transporter, “if that thing’s not fixed by now it’s never gonna run again.”

“Good,” he says. “Not for the transporter, but for me. There’s something I want to show you, is your schedule clear?”

As it turns out, he _does_ actually live in the barracks, but he’s at the very end of the long complex in what’s large enough and nice enough to be officer’s quarters, but remote enough to be jokingly referred to as “exile.” Unfortunately, that joke took on a heavy undertone with Ben, so you shied away from making it. For now, at least.

“It’s nice,” you say, secretly jealous of the full bed and private ‘fresher. You hadn’t taken a shower in an empty facility in weeks and that stretch wasn’t about to come to an end with the base about to be stretched to capacity. You knew how important the help was, and you looked forward to the training that would come over the next few months (they would, after all, be taking in some new pilots as well) but you’d miss only having to bunk with Nona.

“Thanks, but this isn’t it,” he says as he removes the thin leather jacket and hangs it by the door. “What I wanted to show you, I mean. That’s over here.”

‘Over here’ referred to a ladder tucked against the wall which Ben shared with another bunk. It leads straight up to what you realize is a hatch in the ceiling.

“Moon roof,” you say, “ _very_ nice.”

Ben looks put-upon by your comically raised eyebrows and gestures for you to climb up the ladder. The hatch at the top is sticky, but you have enough strength to force it open.

The view is beautiful. Most of the time you’re surrounded by buildings and ships or just stuck in the hangar and can’t fully appreciate how far the forests stretch. They rustle in the late light, like a great dry sea and the parallel chills you. You think of the deepwater chatter as you remember it, but echoing among these foreign trees, lost and distant. You almost miss it.

Ben joins you on the roof and sits, encouraging you to join him. You both intermittently watch the sunset and one another, careful not to catch the other staring. He looks relaxed, but distant, sad in that quiet way that never quite leaves him except when he is laughing. You do not know how you look except probably a little lovesick.

The memory of his hand in yours appears at the edge of your mind and grows and grows and grows until your fingers are literally itching and you give in, nails skittering softly across the metal roof of the barracks to touch his. It is terrifying to reach like that, to be the one to touch first, but the desire to touch him overwhelms it.

You want to press the sadness out from between his eyebrows, wring it dry from the corners of his lips. You pull him back towards the hatch and disappear back down into his quarters.

\--

As it turns out, the freckles and moles stretch everywhere, from his neck across his shoulders even to his hands, broad and strained as you stretch his fingers wide. There is so much to do – so many parts to touch and learn – but you figure why not start here? It takes both of your hands to hold one of his and you marvel at its lightness, because he’s holding it up, not letting the palm press fully into yours. So you draw it carefully up to your face and press it to your cheek (but also to your jaw and your chin and your brow-bone in the process) and gently slide his thumb to the corner of your lips.

The look on his face is helpless and occurs to you that he isn’t touched very often. Beyond everything else, it’s just not all that necessary, especially not for a Force-sensitive. Even when he’s not actively using his powers, he can probably feel you from meters away like he’s standing beside you. You wonder what that would be like, being able to feel others that can’t quite feel you. You think what a shame that would be, and also that you’re jealous. The words get caught a foot behind your tongue, but you retrieve them and wrestle them into order.

“I like having you like this.”

And well, okay, it’s not perfect. It comes out both too soft and too smug, kind of mangled as you chew through it. It doesn’t properly encompass the feeling of engine-hum satisfaction and three-moon gentle light that _this_ makes you feel but it comes close. People never say exactly what they mean, anyways, so they’re good at filling in blanks and you think (more than knowing, you _trust_ ) that Ben is better than most at doing that.

You start with his thumb, skating his palm against your face until it rests against your lips and kissing the pad of it very softly. Then his index finger, then the middle, and so on until you’ve kissed them all and can start on his other hand. His face is soft and open but for his brows as you do this, his lips caught in only the slightest frown of concentration.

When you are finished placing ten kisses on his ten fingers, you move to the corners of his mouth, and around his tired eyes. Those, you think, he has earned. To be twice a betrayer is a burden very few ever know, and you can only imagine the scars that it leaves. So instead you imagine what other places might be in need of kisses.

You kiss the corners of his jaw, so tightly set when he stands next to the general at meetings.

Then you mouth at the shell of his ear, which flushed furiously after the first time he kissed you.

You peck at the dark moles next to his nose (one on each side). And his nose, too, of course.

You press your lips to the soft hollows of his temples, letting them rest long enough that you can almost feel his pulse.

And, finally, for the tense dip between his eyebrows, you take a few moments extra. Your thumbs press gently at the outside corners of his brows, drawing them gently apart, apart, apart until they relax. First you kiss the spot itself, then up a little and to your right.

You take your time, mapping out where your lips will go with gentle fingertips, and slowly make your way down the length of his scar until it disappears into the wide neck of his tunic.

Before you are done, there are tears welling in his eyes that you pretend not to see him try to blink away.

You visit each of these places before you dare touch his lips, but when you do, he welcomes it with a shaking sigh like he was waiting and it sends a tingle through you to think that he was. The vexed line of the frown from when you kissed his hand is gone, and his lips part the barest measure as yours meet them.

His mouth is every bit as soft as it looks.

The kiss is gentle but it goes on for many seconds and is in fact many kisses. You’re not sure how many, exactly, because you were only counting breaths, but it is enough that you become light-headed and giddy, and your hesitance transforms into something like joy when you feel his hands come up to cup your face again without holding themselves away.

He doesn’t taste like Rocket Fuel like the last time, thankfully.  

“Undress,” you say a little breathless. “At least the shirt.”

When the soft-worn garment is in a small heap on the floor, you move around so you’re facing the back of his head, kneeling with your knees apart so that you can fit close.

You press into the expanse of his back – with your hips, your hands, and your tongue – and map out its tensions and markings. The scars get the gentlest treatment even though you know they’re the least sensitive, but the shivers the ghosting sensations send down his spine are so good you can’t help doing it over and over. Next come the freckles, like a whole star map you have to yourself. You chase the lines of them with your tongue: across his shoulders, down to his waist, then up to his neck where you tangle your fingers into his hair and push gently against his scalp as you pull it out of your way.

He lets you tilt his head and lets out a sigh as you continue to card through the soft black hair. Then his fingers are coming up to where you’re sucking gently on his neck and they trace your jaw, and all of the sudden he’s asking you something.

“Come back around. Please. I want—” He cuts himself off, unsure of what to say next _._ Despite it being unfinished, you don’t mind following his request.

\--

A few minutes and articles of clothing later, and you’re laying into his chest. A few splayed fingers hold his jaw up as you work your way down his neck to his collar bones to the surprising softness of his pecs. He’s sensitive and breathy when you trace your tongue around a nipple. You swear you hear a tiny “please” escape his mouth and grin against his breast bone, tempted to see how worked up you can get him. But not right now, you think. Another time, when you’ve already seen and touched and tasted everything, when you’re not so preoccupied with showing him how good he is to touch that you can show him how good it is to _be_ touched.

You do think about how nice that will be, though, as you continue to kiss and suck half-moon marks into his chest. You picture his mouth red and hanging open, a thin, high plea escaping it in the form of a whine as you tease him. Maybe you’ll bring him right to the edge and refuse to let him come. Or maybe you’ll have him come as many times as you like – as many as he can stand – and then once more.

You hum into his skin at the thought, pressing soft, open kisses all the way down his stomach until you’re skirting around th left side of his hip. From his quick and shallow breathing it’s obvious how badly he’d like for you to stop here and strip away the last piece of clothing he’s wearing, but unfortunately for him, you still have somewhere else to be first.

Dragging your teeth across a thigh, you think about how badly you’ve wanted to do this since that time you saw him jogging across the hangar in those stupid khaki pants. You alternate teeth and tongue in a slow rhythm, moving from the top of one thigh to the other, then slide a little lower towards the inside.

The first bite draws a quiet gasp from him, the second a close-mouthed groan, and by the time you reach the hem of his underwear he’s practically moaning at the feeling of you sucking another red bruise into his skin.

It goes on like this for a long time as you continuously find new parts of him to learn and trace. If it’s not his thighs it’s the cords of his neck (mottled red and purple and worked completely loose by the time you’re done with them) or the bones of his wrists (the blue veins beneath the surface begging you to place your lips to them and feel the way they softly pulse) or something else equally as strange and lovely and enticing.

He tries to play this game, too, but each time he reaches, you turn his efforts or attentions away. It started more gently, with a kind if not bossy reassurance: “I’m not done with you, yet, Ben. Can I finish?” But eventually devolves into playfully swatting away his hands and doing whatever you know will distract him most, which does nearly as much for you as all of your attention does for him.

By the time he’s finally ( _finally_ ) completely naked, you barely have any work left to do. You slide a loose, spit-slick fist around his cock, pumping once, twice, maybe five or six times, and already he’s throwing his head back and moaning like he’s about to finish.

Another time maybe you’d tut and slow down, telling him to be quiet and be good and wait for permission, but you’re feeling generous right now and when he makes that sound (yes, _that_ _one_ , that happens as you twist your wrist on the upstroke and bear down a little tighter than before) the idea of stopping is practically criminal.

He comes less than a minute later with a pleasant cry, and the sight of it – his back arched, his neck shining with sweat, his hands fisted in the underside of the pillow above his head – is all the reward you need. Well, but for one thing, you think, straddling his chest and shimmying up a little ways.

You lean down to give him one last kiss before you think you’ll go to the ‘fresher for a towel, but as you’re pulling away, his hands are skimming up your legs and his fingers are hooking into the top of your leggings.

“Do you think you could take these off for me?”

“Yeah?” you say, looking down, eyebrow raised imperiously.

“Yeah, I have something else to show you.”

And with a look like that, with the pink lips and narrowed eyes like he’s all fucked out even though you’ve barely fucked him once, who could possibly say no?

\--

You hum and groan as you hold yourself up over him, stammering that you’re not sure how long you can do this with your legs already shaking like they are. (As the truth happens to be that you severely underestimated the effect your foreplay had on yourself.) But he just mumbles and kisses against you in response and grips down on your thighs from back to front, like he’s challenging you to give him more weight. You test it, let yourself sink a little lower, and can’t hold back the sound that comes out as his tongue presses fully inside you.

It goes on like this, torturously, with him giving you constant pressure cues on hips and thighs, teaching you how to ride him so that neither of you get so tired that you have to stop. And it takes time this way, but the truth is that it takes time no matter how you do it, and it’s so exquisitely _good_ that you don’t mind the wait.

You think you could spend a whole hour with him trapped under you like this. He licks and laps and sucks, moving from one lip to the other and back again with careful precision and just the barest graze of teeth, then traces around the top of your clit with his tongue, almost pressing _on_ it but not quite before dipping back and-- Hell, you think as he pulls down on you again, why not just take a whole day?

He earns himself a whine when he finally adds a finger into the mix, but the truth is that you don’t feel the orgasm start to build in earnest until you look down to see his thoroughly mussed hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes closed in peaceful concentration. His brows knit together, pulling at the edges of the scar tissue that peeks up between his eyes, and his lashes fan out flatteringly on the tops of his cheeks. You groan at the sight and thank whatever gods are out there that he doesn’t open his eyes because if he did you might be done right then and there, especially with the way that tugging is growing in the back of your hips.

And yeah, maybe you’ve read too many holo-novels about dashing smugglers being bedded by proud princesses, but it really does feel like a wave. Not the crest like they always describe it – crashing down around you and making the world go white like some kind of awful bomb – but like the draw of the water that happens before it rises. It’s like the whole sea is pulling back on you asking for more, more, more, just a little more (bearing down on the second finger, leaning in desperately to the wet heat that flicks mercilessly back and forth and all around your clit) before it rears up to blot out the sky (and then he’s _sucking_ and god the noises you’re making are just— all of it is just—) and you’re falling off the crest of that wave, tumbling down through the atmosphere in maddening cycles like a heartbeat. Head over heels over head and back over again until there’s nothing else for it and you have to reach down and _yank_ on his hair saying _enough, that’s enough, no more._

“Please,” you pant, “no more.”

\--

Eventually you convince yourself you’re stable enough to stand and coax him out of bed so that you can both get into the ‘fresher and, _space_ , steam and hot water has never felt this good. The only problem is that you worry you’ll fall asleep standing upright before you make it back to the bed. As it turns out, sex is a pretty exhausting way to end a full day of equipment repairs and facility prep, and you’re paying for that right now. It nearly happens, too, right after you’ve put the soap back up but haven’t yet finished rinsing, but you’re jolted back awake by the feeling of Ben’s hands at your waist and him kissing at the top of your shoulder. Thankful you managed to avoid disaster, you finish rinsing quickly and make sure Ben has done the same.

You both towel off lazily on the way back into the bedroom, stretching apart and then coming together again like two very tired planets tethered by a common center of gravity or perhaps just a desire for that last extra kiss. And then you’re falling onto the bed and he’s trying to pull back the covers around you and the whole thing is a complete and total mess, but you figure it out somehow and find yourselves curled together tightly. His head rests on a pillow tucked into the hollow between your neck and shoulder so that you can thread one hand through his damp hair while the other draws circles on his shoulder. His breath flows like warm water across your collar bones and feel you should say something, but you’re not...quite sure if you can still form words. There’s probably one you can manage, though.

“Goodnight.”

He sighs, sleepily, and mumbles back into your neck, “Goodnight.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so, so much for reading. I know this was a beast, but I hope it might be one that you enjoyed. As always, Kudos and comments are the light of my life, but hits warm my heart all the same.


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